“What now?” I ask without looking away from the fire.
Pest sits back and looks over at Eric. He points a smoking branch toward him. “We got to get him somewhere safe.”
I nod and then smile. That’s another thing we agree on.
103
That night I dream I’m walking. The night is on fire. There are moans around me and shuffling footsteps. I’m tired and hungry and confused. Everyone has left me. Everything is on fire. I look up to the sky, but it’s only smoke and ash and the flashing light of fire.
I hear singing, the singing I know now is my mother, and then I feel a hand in mine. I look up, wanting to tell my mother that I’d be okay, I could do it, she could rest.
The face staring down at me is Eric’s, white worms wriggling from his eyes. He looks down at me and a black tongue snakes out of his mouth. His grip tightens on my hand, and I tug to get away, but I can’t. His grip is painful and I cry out. Eric’s black mouth twists in a perverted grin, and he leans down toward me, the worms in his eyes writhing in the smoky air.
104
I wake up at dawn. The bird’s are singing. For a moment, the darkness of Eric’s eyes seems to stay with me. Like I’m awake but still dreaming. I have to get up and walk it off, walk off his eyes, the feel of his grip on my hand. I tremble and shiver. It takes me a moment to realize that both Pest and Queen are nowhere to be seen. Eric is in the same place as always, sitting with his back to the tree. His jaw is hanging on his chest, his dark mouth agape like a putrid cave. But the disgust of his disease is no longer as strong as it was, and I shrug off the feeling and go to him. By the time I get him to his feet for some exercise, to get some blood pumping through his stiff legs, I’ve mostly forgotten my dream.
“Unh,” Eric groans as I lead him around the little camp.
“Just a little more,” I tell him. He begins to kick out his left leg at a strange angle like he’s trying to shake something off.
“What’re you doing?” I laugh. I wait for him to stop and then lead him forward again. He walks with a strange stiffness on his left side and I start to get a little worried. I bring him back to the tree and ease him down to a sitting position as best I can.
I see the problem right away. It’s the wound in his foot, it’s festering. Well, festering is probably not the right term. There’s dark blood coming out of it, but it’s grayish and stinks like rotten eggs. I stare at it, frowning, not knowing what to do, when suddenly I am pushed down to the ground. I see a flash of white and black fur. A wet tongue rakes across my forehead. I put my hand up.
“Queen!” I cry. “Don’t do that!”
I hear a laugh and then a short whistle and Queen backs away. When I get up and brush myself off, I see Pest standing there with two fat squirrels in his hand, already skinned and ready for the pot.
“It’s not funny,” I mumble. “I didn’t see you guys coming.”
“Yeah, I know,” Pest says with a smile. “But it’s still a little funny.” His dark eyes twinkle at me and I frown.
“I’ll sneak up on you sometime and see how you like it,” I tell him with a scowl.
“Como quieres,” Pest says in Spanish. Lucia’s face shoots across my consciousness, and I feel a lightning bolt of pain.
“Don’t do that,” I tell him, harsher than I mean to.
“Do what?”
“Speak Spanish,” I say. I feel myself glare at him, my eyes like focused lasers.
Pest looks at me for a moment. Then he shrugs. He holds up his dead squirrels and shakes
them at me. “Breakfast,” he says. “And lunch too, probably.” Queen trots around him, her tongue lolling out as she looks up at the squirrels with hunger. “No, not for you,” Pest says. “Go on, now, go find your own food.” Queen licks her jaws and then pushes her head into Pest’s leg. Helplessly, I feel that same jealousy I always feel when animals like other people more than me. I don’t know why I’m like that, but I am. Pest pats her roughly on the head. “Go on now.” Queen gives a little whine and then looks at me once before bounding away into the forest.
“What will she eat?” I ask.
“What won’t she?” Pest asks back. He sees me looking out into the forest after Queen. “Don’t worry about her,” he says. “She can take care of herself.” He crouches down in front of the circle of stone and ash that had been last night’s campfire and lays out the squirrels on one of the rocks. I watch him start building a fire for a minute before I go back to Eric, looking with concern at the wound in his foot. I need to clean it and get him some boots. I go back to the campfire and help Pest build it. I’ll need boiling water to clean that wound. When the fire is going, I take the pot to the nearby stream and come back with it brimming with water. Pest is watching me with those thinking eyes of his. I’m suddenly struck by something I’ve never thought before. The way he thinks, no, the way I can see him thinking, it reminds me of Eric. It makes me uncomfortable, that connection.
“How’s he doing?” Pest asks, motioning toward Eric. I explain the wound in his foot without looking up. Pest gets up and goes to see for himself, and I have to bite down annoyance. I don’t like other people messing with Eric, even if they mean well. Or maybe it’s just Pest, I don’t know. He looks up from the wound. “It’s bad,” he says with a concerned voice.
“What gave you the clue? The stinking hole or the gray puss?” I know I sound like a real jerk, but it just comes out of me before I have time to stop it.
Pest ignores my tone. “We might have to burn it out,” he says.
“What?” I look at him with wide eyes.
“Just look at it,” Pest says. “If this thing spreads, he’ll lose the whole foot.”
“What’re you, a doctor now?” I try to keep from being a jerk, but. . .
“No,” Pest says, “but I know a bad infection when I see it.”
I know he’s right when he says it. But I don’t like it. And I don’t like that I didn’t see it right off. I know he’s right. The darkness of the wound is already spreading and long red lines of infection cover his foot like a web.
“We should do this now,” Pest says. He gets up and goes to the backpack, rummaging inside it. He takes out something and then walks toward me and hands it to me. “You forgot this,” he tells me. For a moment, I’m puzzled before the recognition lights up my face. My knife! The minute my hands grasp it, I feel a sense of relief come over me. It’s so strong that I gasp out loud.
“Thank you!” I exclaim. I feel tears coming to my eyes, and I turn away and wipe them away in the crook of my elbow, embarrassed. I look at him and smile. “I don’t know why I’m crying, it’s just a stupid knife.” I try to laugh, but I feel more tears come, and I remember as clearly as if it’s happening all over again, Eric look over and tell me, keep it with you and keep it sharp. Keep it sharp. I laugh a little. How could I have ever lost it?
Pest nods toward the fire, and I know what I have to do. I put the knife blade into the hottest part of the fire. Pest leans over and blows into the red hot coals to make them even hotter. It isn’t long before the end of the blade is blazing orange. I realize suddenly what I have to do and my stomach recoils. Still, I can’t show Pest how I feel. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to do it. No one touches Eric but me. No one.
I get up from the fire and walk to Eric. I kneel down in front of him and look at the festering wound. Although it was just a small puncture wound, it’s swollen to the size of a golf ball. The swollen wound is seeping grayish, stinking ooze like some nasty volcano. I swallow and try to steady myself. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“The knife is cooling,” Pest says.
“Water is wet,” I snap at him. “Anything else intelligent to say?”
“All I’m saying is that you have to hurry up,” he responds.
I growl at him, but since I know he’s right, I don’t say anything more. I look up at Eric, and, for a moment, I want to say something to him, but with Pest looking ov
er my shoulder, I'm aware of how silly that would be, so I turn back to the suppurating volcano. I swallow and raise up the point of the red hot knife. Breathing out, I squint my eyes and then push the point into the wound. The knife hisses and the gray goo boils around the tip, giving off a smell more putrid than anything I’ve ever smelled. I hear Pest stumble away from us, gagging. But I can’t do that. I push the knife inside deeper, hoping to burn away the infection. There’s a sudden motion under Eric’s skin and then small wriggling maggots begin to boil up out of the wound, falling onto the leaves beneath him. I fight to keep my stomach down and twist the blade in the wound. More worms come wriggling out. I keep moving the knife until all the ooze is gone and no more worms come out. During the whole ordeal, Eric doesn’t even grunt.
When I stand up, Pest is beside me, looking down. “I’ve never seen anything so nasty in my life,” he breathes. “I don’t see how you could do that and not lose it.”
I want to say something smart, but instead I go stumbling away into the forest, clutching my knife. It’s a long time before I stop gagging and vomiting up nothing.
105
After three solid nights of sleep, I feel like a new person. Pest wants to stay in camp for one more day, but I tell him that each moment we wait, Eric gets closer to wasting away to nothing. Pest can’t argue with that, so we pack up camp and head south and west through the forest, Queen leading the way, ecstatic to be moving.
Our first job is to find boots for Eric. His wound is better now, not nearly as swollen, but it still doesn’t look great. We bandaged it up as best we could, but after a few minutes walking through the leaves and branches, the bandages just fall away. We have to find him boots. As for Eric, he doesn’t seem to be aware of his foot at all. He just trudges ahead as usual. But he looks gaunt and his skin has turned darker, from pale white to gray. It makes him look ghoulish and I can’t look at him very long without my heart breaking. Before we head out, Pest puts a rope around Eric. It’s good to have the rope again, it makes me feel like I have more control, but it also hurts. Not even Queen has a leash.
While we walk through the forest, I realize that I haven’t told Pest my story yet, what happened to us after we left him on the road. I begin to tell him because I feel like I owe it to him. I tell him about the barn and the rainbow trout I pulled from the brook. I tell him about how I mashed up food and mixed it with water to feed Eric. I tell him about the arrival of the gang and about what they did to the woman and the little girl. I tell him how one of them mutilated the other prisoner with the Worm, and I tell him about Squint and Doctor Bragg and how we escaped. I tell him everything except one thing: I don’t tell him about how I resuscitated Eric when I dragged him out of the river. I just say he puked up a lot of water and that I was lucky. I don’t tell him about breathing life back into his black mouth, about the taste of the Worm in my mouth, about how Eric vomited a jet of black, putrid liquid directly into my face. I don’t tell him I expected to die of the Worm. I don’t tell him it still might happen, I still might die. I might have the Worm. Truthfully, I don’t Understand why I don’t. I don’t know why I’m still here, still walking. I must have swallowed some of that horrid, black water. I must have the Worm.
Maybe I should tell him. But I can’t. I open my mouth to tell him. I want to tell him. He has a right to know. What if I crack? What if I’m one of those people who get the Worm and just lose their minds, run through the world, killing everything in my path? Pest should know, he should prepare himself for killing me. But I can’t do it. I can’t say the words. I don’t know if it’s because I fear what Pest might do or that he’ll treat me different or if it’s myself I’m scared of. I don’t want to hear the words. I can’t.
So I don’t tell him. I end the story where Queen found us, at the base of the tree, nearly dead from cold and hunger. During the whole story, Pest listens without commenting, without asking any questions. He keeps his head down, only nodding once in a while. When I’m finished, he lifts his head and stops. Looking at me with those intelligent, blue eyes, he says, “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”
I laugh, but it comes out like a bark. I don’t know why I act so differently around Pest. I’ve never made that sound in my life. I sigh and then shrug. “I don’t like talking,” I tell him.
“Water is wet and fire is hot,” Pest responds. “Anything else to say, Miss Obvious?”
I laugh at that, but this time, it’s more natural. I feel a tug at my leading rope, so I turn and follow Eric who had walked ahead while we paused. He hits his shoulder on a tree as he passes.
“Unh,” he says to it.
“Careful, Eric,” I say. I walk ahead and try to guide him on a straight path through the trees ahead.
I have to keep watching him. He could hurt himself. I feel bad for joking around with Pest when I should have been watching him. Pest walks a little ahead, and I can’t help but look at him sometimes, his curly hair, his careful movements through the forest. He certainly doesn’t move like someone his age. He moves like someone with a lot of experience. But I guess we all have that kind of experience now. I remind myself that he and the goon squad were alone out here for a long time before they found the Homestead. I know a lot less about Pest than I’ve realized. Still, it’s strange to watch him. I get that old spooky feeling I’ve always had with him. There’s more to him than I know. I tell myself to keep an eye on him.
There’s just something not right with that kid, I can feel it.
106
Late in the afternoon, we come across a town. Or settlement. Whatever you want to call it. We come out of the woods on a hill, and there it is below us, a few houses, a barn, and several badly-made shacks. There’s a ramshackle wall around the whole place and outside the wall, surrounding the whole place, is a big agricultural field. It just takes a moment to realize that something is wrong. It’s the sound that does it, or lack of it, to be exact. It’s completely silent. A settlement like this should be busy, bustling with people. There should be shouts and calls and ringing bells. But there’s nothing but silence. Not even the wind makes a sound as it passes through.
We crouch down and Pest grabs Queen. He hisses for her to stay while he rummages for his binoculars. Queen whines a little and then licks her jaws and sits reluctantly. I turn Eric toward a tree so he doesn’t wander off. Eric pushes his face into the bark of the tree.
“What do you see?” I whisper to Pest as I crouch next to him.
“Nothing yet,” he responds. “But those fields are newly planted. This was a place where people lived recently. I just don’t—” he makes a hissing sound and then sucks a tooth. “Shit,” he says, dropping his binoculars.
“What?” I ask. Pest hands the binoculars to me as an answer. I lift them and then focus. I don’t see anything at first, just lopsided shacks, piles of wood, and a well-kept street between them, asphalt that’s been brushed and weeded to keep from breaking up. I sweep over a human form and have go back.
I know right away the person is infected. He stands unnaturally stiff, one of his arms hanging as if useless, the other at a strange, crooked angle. He doesn’t move. Then I see another one, shuffling across the road, her jaw hanging open. She walks hunched forward and I see that one of her arms is torn off. Her dress is stained black on one side.
“Damn it,” I say, handing the binoculars back to Pest.
Pest stands up and he has that look that I recognize. He’s thinking. He rubs his chin with his hand like an old man scratching his beard and I get that same spooky feeling I get when I watch him. For a moment, I can’t tell if he’s twelve or forty. “I have to go in,” he says suddenly, looking up to me and snapping me out of it.
“Why?” I ask incredulously. “We can just walk to another place.”
“No, we can’t,” he argues. “We need to get Eric boots. It’s not just the wound he has. He could get another one real easily. What’re we going to do if he hurts himself? Besides,” he continues, �
��we can’t run out of food. I need to get in there, get what we need, and get back here.” He’s right. We need food and Eric is one mis-step away from being crippled.
“Well, you’re not going alone,” I say.
“There’s no need to risk both of us,” Pest argues. “You stay here and watch Eric and I’ll be right back.” He starts to move away, but I grab his arm. He turns back.
“I said,” I reiterate, my voice low and dangerous, “you’re not going down there alone.”
We glare at each other until his shoulders relax a little and I see that I’ve won. I feel a touch of triumph and then I think about it and I’m not sure I should be happy.
Now I have to go down there.
107
There are infected people everywhere. Some of them stand with their jaws hanging open without moving. Some of them shuffle randomly around the town. Some of them are sitting in chairs, as if waiting. Their eyes are dark and waving with pale worms. Men, women, even children. There must be a dozen of them here. I guess it must have happened quickly because they don’t look as emaciated as Eric. If it wasn’t for their rigid, unreal walking and their black eyes squirming with worms, I might think they were people, enjoying a sunny, spring day. But they’re not.
The World Without Flags Page 25
